Chapter 31
MIA
I study my reflection in the hotel bathroom mirror, tilting my chin to catch the light.
The bruises on my throat have faded to a sickly yellow-green that foundation barely camouflages, and nothing a scarf can’t cover.
But I know they’re there. Every time I swallow, I feel the ghost of his fingers pressing down.
Milkshake, milkshake, milkshake—
I shut down the memory before it can fully surface.
This is what compartmentalization is all about.
The first thing they teach you at the agency, and the last thing that actually saves your life.
You take whatever’s bleeding inside you and wrap a bandage over it and put it in a box and you shove that box so far down it might as well be in another universe.
Nate thinks I’m at a work dinner tonight. Told him I have some magazine contacts, potential sources for follow-up pieces, maybe even future story ideas. A lie so mundane it practically tells itself.
The truth is that I haven’t seen him since I walked out of his penthouse four nights ago with his apologies still ringing in my ears and red marks blooming on my skin, wondering if that would be the last time I’d see him.
I’m still not sure.
My phone buzzes.
Intel confirmed. Meeting tonight, 22:00. Red Hook warehouse, Pier 11. Kozlov will be there.
It’s Bayo. Finally.
I’ve been waiting for this since our last briefing, when I told him everything Vanguard shared at the Statue of Liberty. The government contracts, the so-called peacekeeping missions, and his growing certainty that Global Dynamix is turning him into something he doesn’t want to be.
What I didn’t tell Bayo was the whole truth of what happened that night, that America’s golden-boy superhero wrapped his hand around my throat and didn’t let go until I drove my fingers into his windpipe in self-defense.
Some intel you keep for yourself.
I text back: Copy. What’s the approach?
Come to the safe house. We need to gear you up.
I look at myself one more time. The journalist stares back—soft cashmere jumper, artfully messy hair, the kind of woman who attends magazine dinners and asks softball questions and has never killed anyone in her life.
I peel her off like a second skin. Put in my earrings.
Time to go to work.
Kat opens the door before I can knock, her cool eyes doing a quick assessment, checking for threat level, emotional state, and visible injuries.
“You look like shit,” she says when she’s done.
“Cheers, darling. You’re a vision yourself.”
She glares at me and steps aside to let me in. Bayo is at the monitors, brewing something that smells and looks like motor oil but is allegedly coffee. Allegedly.
“There she is. Miss Mia. The woman of the hour.” He looks up from the screens, his face illuminated by the glow. “Ready to get your hands dirty?”
“Been ready for weeks.” I drop into the chair beside him. “What do we have?”
Bayo pulls up a satellite image of the Red Hook waterfront. The warehouse in question is a hulking rectangle of corrugated steel, squatting at the end of a pier that juts into the harbor like a broken finger.
“Kozlov’s using it as a transshipment point,” he says. “Our contacts inside the Bratva confirm he’s meeting with Global Dynamix representatives tonight. Some kind of handoff.”
“Handoff of what?”
“Dunno. That’s what we need you to find out.” He zooms in on the building. “Best guess? Documentation. Records. Something that proves the connection between Kozlov’s trafficking operation and Project Prometheus.”
“What’s the security?” I ask.
“Light exterior presence, it seems. Most of Kozlov’s men will be inside for the meeting.
” Bayo switches to a thermal image, bodies glowing orange against the cool blue of the structure.
“We count maybe fifteen, but that could change. Kozlov doesn’t like witnesses, so it’ll be his most trusted people. ”
“Entry points?”
“Main door here”—he taps the screen—“loading dock on the east side, a hole in the ceiling over here, and there’s a maintenance access on the roof. That’s our best bet. Old ventilation system. Should be a tight squeeze, but you’ve done worse.”
“The Prague embassy,” I say, remembering with a wince. “That was so narrow I had to dislocate my bloody shoulder.”
“Which you did,” Kat says. “And then complained about it for six months.”
“Yeah, well it still makes a funny sound when it rains.”
Bayo ignores us both. “I’ll be running comms from here. Kat will be positioned two blocks out in the extraction vehicle. If things go sideways—”
“They won’t.”
“If they go sideways,” he repeats, “you call for extraction and we come get you. Response time is approximately four minutes.”
Four minutes. In a gunfight, that’s a lifetime.
“I’ll be fine.” I stand, moving toward the weapons rack. “Let’s get me dressed.”
Forty minutes later, I’m crouched on a rooftop three buildings away from the warehouse, watching the pier through a compact monocular.
The November wind cuts through my tactical blacks like they’re nothing.
I’m wearing my work uniform tonight, lightweight armor under a fitted jacket, both knives strapped to my thighs, suppressed Glock in a drop holster, and enough tech sewn into my clothes to make Q Branch weep with envy.
The earrings stay in—my connection to Bayo, my lifeline if everything goes to hell.
“Approaching perimeter,” I murmur. “Two guards on the main entrance. One vaping. The other’s on his phone.”
“Copy that,” Bayo says in my ear. “Thermal shows the main group concentrated in the central space. Meeting must be in progress.”
Good. I need them distracted.
I slip down the fire escape, moving from shadow to shadow with the ease of long practice. The waterfront is deserted at this hour, no late-night joggers, no romantic couples, nobody to witness the small woman in black ghosting through the darkness like she belongs to it.
The vaping guard is my first problem. He’s positioned with a clear sightline to the maintenance ladder I need to access. I watch him for a full minute, memorizing his pattern: drag, exhale, glance left, glance right, repeat. Fifteen-second intervals between sweeps.
When his head turns right, I move.
It’s maybe thirty meters of open ground.
I cover it in a silent sprint, my boots soundless on the wet asphalt, and I’m at the ladder before he looks back.
Up the rungs, hand over hand, the metal cold through my gloves.
The ventilation housing on the roof is exactly where Bayo said it would be, a rectangular box with a grated cover that’s heavily rusted.
The screws give way to my multi-tool with minimal protest. I lift the grate carefully, quietly, and peer into darkness.
“I’m at the access point,” I whisper. “Going in.”
“Copy. Good luck, Miss Mia.”
The shaft is tight but manageable. I army-crawl through decades of accumulated dust and, ewwwwww, a couple of dead mice, following the gentle slope downward toward the interior.
Every few meters, I pass a vent cover that offers glimpses of the space below, spotting stacked crates, exposed pipes, and the occasional silhouette of a guard.
Then I hear voices.
I freeze, pressing myself flat, and cautiously inch forward until I’m directly above what appears to be a makeshift meeting room, made up of folding tables and industrial lighting. Gathered around them are a collection of faces that makes my pulse kick up.
Kozlov himself is unmistakable—barrel-chested, shaved head, the kind of brutal face that’s been broken and reassembled more times than you can count. He’s flanked by four of his men, all armed, all radiating the specific stealthy stillness of people who kill for a living.
Across from him are two figures in corporate attire. One I don’t recognize—youngish, nervous, clearly out of his depth.
The other makes my blood go cold.
Conrad Fucking Marsh.
The CEO of Global Dynamix himself and one of the richest men in the world. Here, in a warehouse, meeting with one of the Eastern Seaboard’s most notorious human traffickers.
I carefully slip my recording device from my pocket and start recording.
“—shipment was compromised,” Marsh is saying. “Fifteen subjects lost before we could extract viable samples.”
Subjects. Not people. Subjects.
Because of course that’s how a wannabe oligarch tech-bro would see them. Might as well call them serfs and reintroduce the feudal system.
“This is not my problem,” Kozlov growls, his accent thick. “I deliver what you order. What you do after, this is your business. Not mine.”
“What we do after requires living material, Mr. Kozlov. Dead bodies don’t hold consciousness worth a damn.”
The younger man flinches at Marsh’s words. Kozlov just laughs, a sound like gravel in a cement mixer.
“Then you pay more. Higher quality, higher price. This is how business works. I know you have the money. You have all the world’s money.”
Marsh’s jaw tightens. “Dr. Van Veen is not pleased with the current arrangement. She’s considering alternative suppliers. We have some here already on home soil.”
“Let her consider then.” Kozlov leans back, spreading his hands.
“There is no alternative. I control the pipeline from Eastern Europe. The refugees, the displaced, the ones nobody notices are gone. They come through me or they don’t come at all.
Your doctor knows this. Sure, you may think you can get it from your own peoples, but after the last government, I’m afraid you can’t do that anymore.
They’re watching. The world is watching. ”
My hands are steady as I record, but inside, something is screaming bloody murder. This is it! This is the proof we’ve been looking for. The connection between Global Dynamix, Kozlov’s trafficking operation, and whatever nightmare they’re running in those laboratories.
This is what happened to the people Kapoor discovered.